For many Americans during the Vietnam era, the war on the home
front seemed nearly as wrenching and hardfought as the one in
Southeast Asia. Its primary battlefield was the news media, its
primary casualty the truth. But as William Hammond reveals,
animosity between government and media wasn't always the rule; what
happened between the two during the Vietnam War was symptomatic of
the nation's experiences in general. As the "light at the end of
the tunnel" dimmed, relations between them grew ever darker.
"Reporting Vietnam" is an abridgment and updating of Hammond's
massive two-volume work issued by the Government Printing Office.
Based on classified and recently declassified government
documents--including Nixon's national security files--as well as on
extensive interviews and surveys of press war coverage, it tells
how government and media first shared a common vision of American
involvement in Vietnam. It then reveals how, as the war dragged on,
upbeat government press releases were consistently challenged by
journalists' reports from the field and finally how, as public
sentiment shifted against the war, Presidents Johnson and Nixon
each tried to manage the news media, sparking a heated exchange of
recriminations.
Hammond strongly challenges the assertions of many military
leaders that the media lost the war by swaying public opinion. He
takes readers through the twists and turns of official public
affairs policy as it tries to respond to a worsening domestic
political environment and recurring adverse "media episodes." Along
the way, he makes important observations about the penchant of
American officials for placing appearance ahead of substance and
about policy making in general.
Although Richard Nixon once said of the Vietnam war, "Our worst
enemy seems to be the press," Hammond clearly shows that his real
enemies were the contradictions and flawed assumptions that he and
LBJ had created. Reporting Vietnam brings a critical study to a
wider audience and is both a major contribution to an ongoing
debate and a cautionary guide for future conflicts.
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